The Bixby Letter

[Steve]

(08-10-2018 05:09 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  Thanks for posting, Steve. I have often read that Mrs. Bixby's income came from keeping a house of prostitution. Maybe I am missing it, but is there definite evidence that this is true (beyond what the police apparently said)?

The only evidence of Mrs. Bixby running a house of prostitution comes from the 1904 memoir of Boston socialite Sarah Cabot Wheelwright. It was part of a larger account of her life written for her daughter. Here's the text of the account relating to Bixby:


Another woman to whom I gave work was a Mrs. Bixby, who had been recommended to me by Mrs. Charles Paine as being very deserving. She claimed to have five sons in the army. She was a stout woman, more or less motherly-looking, but with shifty eyes. We called her “Mother Bixby.” I did not like her, but there seemed to be good reason for helping her. Having heard that there were means of getting supplies to Libby Prison (a very difficult thing to do) I was desirous of sending a box of small comforts to the soldiers. Speaking of it to her, she said that one of her sons was at home for a time on leave and that if I would come to her house in Albany Street or Essex Street — I forget which — she would tell me more about it. That morning I came in the cars with my cousin Mary Cabot, and she walked along the street with me while I was telling her about it, and waited on the doorstep while I was in the house — a very providential thing, as I found afterwards. I did not like the look of things at all, and the woman was very evasive; would give me no definite information — said her son was not there, and asked if I would meet him somewhere. I said that I would, and told her to send him to the ladies’ room in the Albany Station at a certain time. I was there at the time appointed, and presently a very ill-looking man, who had lost some of the fingers of his right hand, came towards me. He began with some familiarity, but I soon put a stop to him, finding I could get no information from him, and sent him off. Soon after this I received a very distressed letter from Mrs. Paine, saying that the police, on finding that we were helping this woman, had told her that she kept a house of ill-fame and was perfectly untrustworthy and as bad as she could be. We found that it was a convenient story for her to tell that she had five sons in the war, but that probably not more than two were her sons; the others were inmates of this house of ill-fame. Later, after the war, I saw in a newspaper the following letter written by President Lincoln to Mrs. Bixby:

November 21 , 1864.

Dear Madam:

I have been shown in the report of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who died bravely on the field of battle. I feel how fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from a loss so overwhelming. But I can not refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the purest memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom.

Yours very sincerely and respectfully,

A. Lincoln.

This was written by Mr. Lincoln amid all the excitement attendant upon his re-election to the Presidency. To think that these precious words should have been sent to this worthless woman, and that such blunders should have been made in the War Department!

It is discouraging that as late as 1904 this lie should have been repeated in a book which I take up this very day.